Tag Archives: Fiction

First Day of National Novel Writing Month 2012

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I have decided to do National Novel Writing Month. Thank You to all my friends who encouraged me.

So I loaded Scrivener and started a new short story project. Stared at the empty screen. Panicked when I realized I couldn’t remember any of my ideas for a short story. Took a deep breath and calmed down enough to recall I have been wanting to write a short pre-writing sort of story about the death of the character’s grandmother.

I have thus far written one sentence and I don’t know what else I am going to write. Maybe I should have decided I was going to do this earlier, did a bit more planning. LOL

But I am less panicked now and I know some of what I want to write. I am not going to do the traditional sort of NaNo. Instead I want to write five 10,000 word stories.

According to some people, that makes me a NaNo rebel. I don’t think I agree. I am still going to write 50,000 and I disagree with people who think 50,000 words worth of short stories is easier 50,000 words worth of a novel. It’s still 50,000 words.

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National Novel Writing Month 2012

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I did National Novel Writing Month last year, but I didn’t finish until well after the New Year. I did write more daily than I thought possible, so it wasn’t a loss.

This year, with NaNoWriMo starting the day after tomorrow, I am om the fence about whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year. Last year was an experience, but I am not sure it is one I want to repeat. I was on the fence even before Sandy arrived and destroyed transportation, likely adding lots more time to my daily commute. So I will probably have a lot less time than last year to do this. Also, large chunks of the city are without power . . . so yeah. Now I am even less sure.

Plus, it will mean taking time away from editing. That’s a positive thing, IMO. I could use time away from it. Editing sucks.

IF I do decide on participating National Novel Writing Month, I will probably write five 10,000 word stories. I have never written so much as one 10,000 word story before and read hardly any. So it won’t be easy. Short stories are their own little world, one I don’t usually gravitate to naturally, so it will be a challenge.

It’s still 50,000 words. ;) It means writing one story or 10,000 words every five days. Which, yeah, feels scary just thinking about it. Advice, thoughts, anyone?

I don’t actually have ideas for five long-ish short stories, but I imagine they will come. (Yes, pantster, me!)

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Do you take notes while you read?

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I just read this post on Should Be Reading where MizB says she takes notes while reading. Me, I don’t understand that at all. At least not while reading fiction and most non-fiction. I only ever took notes when I read books for class. Once, I was even inspired to highlight when reading a historical/economy/business book for the book-club. (But the book was on my kindle, so nothing was damaged.)

You see this book? I could never markup a book like this. Never.

I’ve never written in a book itself, not even for school. I took notes in my notebook and stuck them in between the books’ pages. It feels a bit sacrilegious to actually make notes in the book itself. I rarely even highlight anything and when I do, it’s only as a last resort.

It’s different with books on the kindle. There, I don’t mind if I highlight passages – doing so makes finding certain paragraphs easier. Faster than using the search function. Truthfully, I feel freer to highlight books in the kindle.  I feel like it damages the book less.

Which may be a silly reaction. Maybe not. Definitely not when it comes to library books and textbooks I intended to sell after the semester. But otherwise? Maybe being unwilling to mark up my books is silly.

The other thing I only took notes on books for school. It’s not something that comes naturally to me for pleasure reading. Never, for fiction books. Only occasionally for non-fiction. I suppose I associate all note-taking with school, which casts an unpleasant pallor over books I mean to read for fun.

Free Reads on Google Play

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So I was searching through the books in Google Play. I went through various menus, Featured, Top Selling, New Arrivals in Fiction, New Arrivals in Non-Fiction, until I arrived at Top Free.

I expected this section to be filled with classics. That is, books whose copyright had expired, along with a few other, more recently published books. I was wrong.

Well, not completely. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells topped free books the list. There were a few other titles, too, that I didn’t recognize and could possibly be classics. (I am not an expert on the classics.)

No, mostly it was bonus stories from writers I’ve heard of. Patterson, Christine Warren, Jenna Black and others. Which surprises me. I didn’t get any and I suppose they are complete stories, just short. I usually go looking for those bonus short stories on the author’s website. A couple were more novella sized – around 100 pages. Google Play is probably a pretty good outlet for them, too.

Plus! There was also a whole free book by Jayne Ann Krentz.

I didn’t see a lot of a self-published books, which surprised me. At least none I recognized.

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Book Review: Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton

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Blurb from Goodreads: When a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Anita Blake to find her. And when she does, she’s faced with something she’s never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people—kids, grandparents, soccer moms—all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving a master. And where there’s one martyr, there will be more…

But even vampires have monsters that they’re afraid of. And Anita is one of them…

So  . . .  I am done with Kiss the Dead. It didn’t take long to finish. As always, it moves fast and quick. I talked about it here when I just started.

What I liked best: the beginning.

She gets her butt kicked by a new vampire in the opening pages. ;) It may be wrong of me, but I enjoyed it. It gave me hope for the rest of the book.

That hope was, by and large, fulfilled. Maybe because my expectations were low to begin with. LOL

Mostly, I just wanted a book that wasn’t driven by sex. That’s what I got. Oh, make no mistake, there was sex. But the first happened half way through the book and the second shortly after. I can’t tell you much about them; I am afraid I skipped past them. I don’t feel like I missed anything. As near as I can tell, there are no new guys.

I did pick up that by the end of Kiss the Dead, she has reached new levels of comfort with the youngest guy, the one she got as a kid in one of the previous books. (He’s eighteen now and about ready to graduate from high school. I cannot tell you much this relationship creeps me out.)

What I disliked: how Anita feels the need to point out she is small and tough every couple of paragraphs. Sometimes several times in the same paragraph.

The thing that surprised me the most is that they banished Asher for a few months. At the end, Anita has doubts about whether or not JC can really banish him. But I am hoping it happens. It’ll shake up their happy little life.

About the mystery: Anita does a lot of shooting. She does some things to scare the vampires into telling her what she want to know.

Some of the investigative part? I don’t know. Some of it feels iffy to me. Like it happens because the author needs to happen and there isn’t enough explanation.

I didn’t like the end. I didn’t dislike it, either. Oh, the mystery is solved; she goes deeper into her relationships. But it didn’t really satisfy. Something is missing, but hell if I can figure out what.

So . . . I am still going to read the next book.

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Friday Flash: Trapped

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A new friday flash! This one is 169 words. It was inspired by this photo at wiki commons.

Daybreak turned the sky a beautiful, harsh orange. The bright color hurt her eyes and she slipped the special dark goggles over her eyes.

Why had he come here? Even for a hunter such as her brother, survival would be difficult here. Too much sun. No red lakes to feed on. No decent winds to ride.

A sharp roar tore through the air. She whirled around, saw the all surface truck rise through the air. She ran; her bodyguard sprinted ahead and shot at it. But it rose too fast and was soon too far away to even see.

The truck left behind a small pile of dirt. A small furry animal poked its head out of the ground.

She raised her weapon and shot it. It was a neat shot; only a little bit of blood stained the ground. She picked it, put her mouth to the wound and sucked out its sweet red blood.

“We’ll find more,” she said to the guard. “We’ll rebuild and take revenge.”

Why Not to Use Pen And Paper to Write

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Last fall, I dedicated a single subject spiral bound notebook to my flash fiction.

It is presently lost. I imagine it will turn up somewhere. Probably months from now, when I remember nothing about the half-finished flash fiction in it.

That’s the way it always happens. I don’t know how many notebooks I’ve lost track of. Oh, they usually turn up again, but by the time I find it again, I’ve lost hope and started another notebook for fiction. I’ve had marble notebooks, spiral notebooks, those little folders that you can turn into notebooks by slipping loose leaf paper into fasteners/prongs/whatever the are called.

I’ve lost lots. I don’t even know how many. IMO, this is the single best argument for not writing with pen/paper.

(Aside from the fact I dislike transcribing everything to a word file. Feels like duplicate work.)

I’ve never lost a flash drive or any other file on my computer. Even if I forget where it’s saved – never happened! – a computer search is easier than searching every nook and cranny in the house.

But sometimes you just need a pen in your hand, you know? Sometimes it works better than a keyboard. I wish that wasn’t so. I am just grateful I am not often inspired to write with pen and paper.

But if I don’t find the damn notebook soon, I am never getting a notebook for fiction ever again. Never!!!!

Friday Flash: Dust Devil

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Not entirely sure about this one, but here we go. ;)

The dust devil rose on the horizon, where the lake met the river. It wound lazily among the clouds.

She gaped at it for a heartbeat, than snatched the basket of clothes and ran back to the house. Bare feet slid in the mud, but she didn’t dare slow down.

She looked back only once. All the fishing boats were coming in.

Her mother and aunts were in the front yard, shelling peas and laughing.

“It’s coming!” she gasped. “The dust devil. Over the lake.”

Her mother frowned. “Are you sure – you must be. Give me that. Get the children.”

Friday Flash: Deferred Promises

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This idea just came to me.

The white stag raced across the muddy, churned-up meadow, shimmered and disappeared.

Fucking fae.

Fury swept through Hammer. He fisted his hands, wanting to hit something. Preferably the fae. The stupid lying fae – how could he be so stupid?

He knew they lied. Knew he shouldn’t believe the stag’s sweet words.

Hammer turned, slammed his fist into the tree behind him. Pain sang up his arm. He welcomed it, welcomed the splinters. Anything to take his mind off the stag’s betrayal.

He smashed his fist into the tree again. Heard something crack. He looked up and something silver fell to the ground in front of him. A ring.

He bent and picked it up. The words I am sorry were etched around the band.

N is for No Ideas

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It’s not that I’ve no ideas for short stories right now; I’ve several. It’s that I am not entirely sure how to write them down.

Where do I start? What character do I start with?

It’s not like writer’s block (which I don’t believe in anyway.) Writer’s block is supposed to be when a writer has no ideas at all about a story. You stare at the blank page and your mind is blank, too. You got no characters, no plot, no world, nothing. Not even the seed of an idea.

You need to start at the beginning, right? But where is the beginning? That’s the question. I don’t know.

Personally, I think this means I just to think about the story a little bit more. Or maybe I will just write the scenes I do and worry about the beginning later. No one ever said the story has to be written linearly. I could jump around the timeline and piece it all together later.

There is trouble with that approach – making sure all the pieces fit and follow each other and don’t develop a big gaping hole – but I am not sure what else to do.

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